Australian floods: Why were we so surprised?

[Violet_Crumble]

Meteorologists warned Australians six months ago to prepare for a soaking. And nobody did a thing ...

Germaine Greer
The Guardian
Saturday 15 January 2011

What's going on in Australia is rain. British people might think that they're rain experts. Truth is that they hardly know what rain is. The kind of cold angel sweat that wets British windscreens isn't proper rain. For weeks now rain has been drumming in my ears, leaping off my corrugated steel roof, frothing through the rocks, spouting off the trees, and running, running, running past my house and down into the gully, into the little creek, into the bigger creek, and on to the Nerang river and out to sea at Southport. We've had more than 350mm in the last four days. My creek is running so high and so fast that I can't get out and my workforce can't get in. I can't even go for a walk under the dripping trees, because I'll come back festooned with leeches. In these conditions you can end up with a leech in your eye, and there's no one here to help get it out.

<snip>

So, yeah, as Australians say, the problem is rain. The ground is swollen with months of it. The new downpours have nowhere to go but sideways, across the vast floodplains of this ancient continent. We all learned the poem at school, about how ours is "a sunburnt country . . . of droughts and flooding rains". Groggy TV presenters who have been on extended shifts, talking floods for endless hours, will repeat the mantra, so hard is it wired into the heads of Australian kids. And yet we still don't get it. After 10 years of drought, we are having the inevitable flooding rains. The pattern is repeated regularly and yet Australians are still taken by surprise.

The meteorologists will tell you that the current deluge is a product of La Niña. At fairly regular intervals, atmospheric pressure on the western side of the Pacific falls; the trade winds blow from the cooler east side towards the trough, pushing warm surface water westwards towards the bordering land masses. As the water-laden air is driven over the land it cools and drops its load. In June last year the bureau of meteorology issued a warning that La Niña was about "to dump buckets" on Australia. In 1989-90 La Niña brought flooding to New South Wales and Victoria, in 1998 to New South Wales and Queensland. Dr Andrew Watkins, manager of the bureau's climate prediction services, told the assembled media: "Computer model forecasts show a significant likelihood of a La Niña in 2010." In Brisbane the benchmark was the flood of 1974; most Queenslanders are unaware that the worst flood in Brisbane's history happened in 1893. Six months ago the meteorologists thought it was worthwhile to warn people to "get ready for a wet, late winter and a soaked spring and summer". So what did the people do? Nothing. They said, "She'll be right, mate". She wasn't.

It takes La Niña to bring rain to the inland, in such quantities that it can hardly be managed. Manage it Australians must. The Wivenhoe Dam on the Brisbane river was built to protect the city of Brisbane from another flood like the one of 1974. For years it has been at 10% of capacity, so when it filled this year nobody wanted to let any of the precious water out. It eventually became clear that the dam had filled to 190% of its capacity, and the authorities realised with sinking hearts not only that the floodgates would have to be opened, but that the opening would coincide with a king tide in Moreton Bay. The question nobody has been heard to ask is whether or not the level of water in the dam should have been reduced gradually, beginning weeks ago. The mayor of Brisbane, aware that a disaster was about to occur on his watch, made a hysterical attack on the opponents of dam building, but what the succeeding events prove is that dams are no substitute for a coherent water strategy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/15/australian-floods-queensland-germaine-greer

[petronius]

1. "cold angel sweat" - what does that make hail, then?

:)

[Uncle Joe]

8. Ice cubes being spilled from their alcoholic beverages.

Angels are notorious for not being able to hold their liquor.

:toast:

[petronius]

9. Well that's a relief - I was afraid they had rabbits in heaven...

:)

[denem]

2. Greer left Australia io 1962 at the age of 23

and ever since has been self a appointed expert on the country she so seldom visits. If the drought had continued for another 10 years she wouldn't been surprised either. Indeed she would have able to find some passage in her voluminous contradictory work to prove she had predicted it.

[Violet_Crumble]

3. And she lives here for a few months every year...

I can recall in the past reading things from her on issues here that I've totally disagreed with, but in the case of this article, even though I dislike her writing style, I think she's got it spot on. We don't prepare well for floods...

[denem]

4. Australia prepares even less well for droughts.

You can rebuild a house, but not an extinct species nor a salt-of-the-earth dead habitat.

[Violet_Crumble]

5. It doesn't prepare less well. It just doesn't prepare for either flood or drought...

Sure, you can rebuild a house, and if houses were all that was affected by flooding, that'd be the end of it. But there's massive environmental damage done by floods like this one, which is what Germaine Greer was talking about in her article...

[denem]

10. On my negativity towards Germaine Greer,

there's a long history. I started out with a very positive if idealized view, and fell to earth, so to speak.

The most obvious thing I can say about her is that she's a snob:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/feb/03/realitytv.australia

The next would be her passion for hyperbole:
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/people/stephen-fry-cops-panning-from-germaine-greer-20101102-17aua.html

She makes some valid points but as usual, has little rime or interest
in people on the ground , other than herself, actually trying to do something about it::
http://www.healthywaterways.com.au

[Violet_Crumble]

11. I've just gone and reread some of her stuff, and I agree with you..

The hyperbole in the OP was what I didn't like, and now I've read through the comments, I see that she got it wrong about the dam:


'As of Friday the 7th, Wivenhoe stood at 105% - more-or-less the 100% set point for drinking water. Over the following five days it shot up to the 190% peak level - despite the dam management doing exactly what they were supposed to do: bleed off the incoming water through the floodgates at a rate slower than the rate at which it came in.

At its peak, water was being released into the lower river at a rate about 1/5th of the rate of inflow into the dam. They handled the situation near-perfectly, and there is no doubt that they substantially reduced the peak river level in Brisbane.'


I've also got a problem with her calling the Lord Mayor of Brisbane hysterical. That's really uncalled for, as he handled everything really well. And I've reacquainted myself with her comments about Steve Irwin, blame for various bushfires, and a few other things, but she committed the unforgivable when she had a go at Stephen Fry....

Anyway, I think it's a very safe bet she's not getting herself all muddy and stinky helping out with the massive cleanup. I think I'll make sure I get my stuff on criticism of flood management from more reliable sources in the future...

[denem]

14. Well (& this is typical of me) having gone negative

I'll play defense. She's doing her bit, restoring a small parcel of land and finding joy in the rainforest. I've been lucky enough to experience an untouched (tropical) rainforest in northern Queensland. It's magnificent. I felt spiritual peace, although our guide was only too happy to tell us that 8 of the worlds 12 most poisonous snakes called it home.

She's right also about the Lockyer valley. It's been heavily cleared, but for the life of me, I can't remember a flood that's not brown.

My take on all this is that Germaine is a drama queen. She will say things more and more outrageous until she gets the attention she craves. What I don't like is the venom, playing fast and loose with facts, but above all, denying any responsibility for things she's said in the past, no matter how much she's changed her tune, particularly when she goes on to explain at length why there's no conflict whatsoever.

I read The Female Eunuch at the age of 12, as a very immature little ass, then began to realize that I really did not understand. The next thing I read was 'The Second Sex' and ....

I will always be grateful for the iconic cover on that book. Without it, I might not have browsed though a page or two. After that I was hooked.

[Matilda]

17. Germaine can be very didactic, and there is a tendency to think that she alone has all the answers.

But she is often very good at pinpointing and articulating a problem.

One thing I think she may be right about is the loss of topsoil - this is a huge problem right around the country, and one of the major contributing factors to the salinity of the Murray-Darling basin. And Queensland has a very big mining industry, one of the major contributors to soil erosion. No government anywhere in Australia has ever made it policy to criticise mining companies for the real horrors wrought on the landscape by mines, nor to make
any real effort to make sure that damage is minimised and cleanups undertaken once mines are played out. I doubt the Hunter region could ever return to its natural state, even if all mining was stopped now. The damage is far too great, and this is replicated elsewhere, but most particularly in Queensland and W.A.

The spread of industry is the biggest threat, but farmers also contribute by cutting down trees in order to plant more crops, even though they are likely to lose many of those crops in times of drought - trees are responsible for determining rainfall, but even though they've been warned for decades, farmers keep right on cutting down trees. I'm a city girl, but I'm always horrified whenever I drive even a few miles outside the city limits, and look upon mile after mile of an almost treeless landscape.

There's a limit to how much people can be held responsible for nature, but I don't think we do a great deal to help lessen the worst effects of drought and flood. There's always lots of talk right after a major event such as the current flooding, but what changes? I found this 2004 Queensland Government Report into soil erosion, and I wonder if anything has been done along the lines suggested? Somehow I doubt it - too many vested interests.

http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/land/management/pdf/c1scdm.pdf

[Prometheus Bound]

13. If pointing out ignorance and superficiality in a reality TV show makes her a snob...

...then I would be one too in your books, as I suspect would a large proportion of the DU community.

[denem]

15. I suggest you read more about Germaine

Yes, that makes me a snob, but try and get your head around 'Sex and Destiny' and it's central theme: Commercialization of Sexuality in the West, keeps us alienated from the deeper significance of sexual relations : Children.

[Demoiselle]

6. I am so sorry Australia is going through this terrible time..

I've been there once...for a month...Saw the great dry red middle (Alice Springs, Ularu) and went north,too, to Queensland and up to the Daintree. What a beautiful, strange, magic place. Sydney is wonderful, by the way, and I loved Australians and their open, welcoming, laid back kindness. Sending all kinds of good vibes, prayers and well wishes that all the people, and the animals (with a special shout out to cassowaries) come through it safely..

[msongs]

7. this is a recurring cycle over hundreds of years, nothing new about it at all nt

[Violet_Crumble]

12. I think it may have been going on for many thousands of years...

European settlement only happened in the past few hundred years, so before that there were no records of what happened.

[MrModerate]

16. Greer is not exactly a hydrologist, and the responses to the flood threats . . .

Have represented best practice. If she means Aussies didn't get hysterical about potential floods, I'd have to agree with her.

A little accuracy would help, however. The management of the Wivenhoe dam doesn't bear any relation to her garbled description, and Brisbane's mayor (not my favorite poltician) was anything but hysterical (as best I can tell, Newman doesnt do hysterical).

Despite the positive influence from earlier in her career as a public intellectual, Greer has deteriorated into a public crank. And not just on this issue. I hope I age a bit more gracefully.